We got off our plane exhausted from the late flight. We got our bags and found a taxi. Due to our tiredness we went to bed as soon as we could. The next day we woke up to a very grey day, which is actually what the weather is like all year round, it is a mix of mist and pollution. We explored the old town using mostly city busses. We went to the San Fransisco monastery in Lima. It turned to be quite amazing, but we couldn’t take pictures. There were catacombs under the cathedral with a lot of skeletons, it was a little creepy arranged nicely! In a part of the tour we saw one of the most important library’s in the Americas. It looked almost like the one in Harry Potter. The books were gigantic and very very old. One way to explain it is to imagine the dustiest library with books that are half your size, spiral staircases, and scrolls. It was pretty cool to see a library such as that one.

One night we went to a very nice restaurant called Saqra. We ordered octopus, quinoa crusted sea scallops, a cream of artichoke soup with smoked trout and sour cream, and a kind of ravioli. It was really good, Lima is supposed to be the culinary capital of South America. The next day we left on a special bus company called Peru Hop. After some time on the bus we stopped to visit a mansion that was owned by very rich Spaniard in the old days. The house was estimated to have had 1000 slaves, they had slaves tunnels. They used to brand them with a special number to identify who they belonged to and to know if they were runaway slaves. The slaves were treated terribly. The slave tunnels were built for 3 reasons since the mansion was near the port the pirates came to rob the house, then it was also used as and escape tunnel, but the worst reason and the completely cruelest reason was to avoid the tax to bring the slaves into the port.

After a few more hours of driving we made it to the Paracas. It was a tiny village with not much to do but go on the wildlife tours its nickname is the poor man’s Galapagos. The wild life on the islands was incredible, there were blue footed boobies, Nazca boobies, tiny little penguins which were on the top of my list. They were so adorable hopping and waddling down the rocks. We weren’t quite in the season for the sea lions but we saw a few. When our tour was nearly over we went to a spot that was filled with dolphins.

We left for the desert dunes of Huacachina. They are huge! We got to our hotel had lunch then went on an epic buggy trip and sand boarding adventure. We drove up to the sand boarding dunes. First we laid on our stomachs using our feet as breaks, the second hill we sat on the board. On the final hill we stood up snowboard style. Standing up was the most fun way once I did a 360 in the air stuck the landing then went down the rest of the hill unfortunately I forgot to ask my dad or sister to film it. It was so nice to just ride down and not I don’t think my dad could say the same because he crashed most of his tries. On one of his wipeouts he got to the bottom of the hill then he got thrown of his board and cut his eyebrow a bit.

The next day I hiked the dunes and it was painful, you had to work so many muscles and the sand is hard to walk in. I was using my flip flops to help me climb. When I finally made it to the top I looked on both sides, on one there were endless dunes, on the other lay the town of Ica with big buildings. I was thinking one day these dunes would be wrecked. You start to see a lot of trash in the dunes. We left on the bus for Arequipa. On the way we stopped at small tower with a view of 2 of the Nazca lines. The lines were believed to be made by the civilization of Nazca which were way before the Inca. They resembled a tree and a kind of bird of some sort. Those 2 were only a part of the 36. I got a little rock with 6 of the Nazca lines. We literally spent the whole day in the bus.

We arrived in Arequipa at 5:40 in the morning. I must say that I was impressed by the architecture, the colors of the building and the old Spanish type houses. The restaurants were very nice, one night we ate at the greatest restaurant in South America and it was called Chicha. I had osso bucco raviolis with a wine and mustard sauce. I also found out that a basil lemonade is really good. In the town we visited the monastery of Santa Catalina. It was a really beautiful place. It was constructed for nuns in 1579, a total of 250 nuns lived there. Family’s also wanted a good education for their daughters so they sent them to be educated in the monastery. In total about 500 women lived in the monastery. The kitchens seemed very old, there was a big stone oven with pots around it. The vibrant colors and courtyards made it very nice. We visited the museum where you can find some of the oldest and most preserve mommies, the famous Juanita a teenage girl that was sacrificed for the Inca religion.

After a few more days in Arequipa we took the bus for Cusco. We got picked up by the bus at 5:40 in the morning and we never stopped once in the entire day. When we finally got to Cusco and checked into our hotel we got outside and explored. My parents said that it was so much more different than the time they visited it in 1998, so much bigger. The shops sold mostly alpaca merchandise, but they were all nice. The second day that we were in Cusco there was the celebration of Corpus Christi. Saints were being transported in these kinds of structures with a sculpture on top. The town and villages fro around the area came for a beautiful parade. The costumes were so cool, colorful and the dances were awesome. Some had costumes that looked traditional, others had huge dresses or hats. Each group represented a Saint, with special colors and dances. Firecrackers were going off every now and then. The celebrating went on for the whole day, and the entire city was crammed with people.

As the days passed we explored different places in the city, and found new souvenirs. We left for Ollantaytambo, a tiny town that has a train to Machu Picchu in the Sacred Valley. On the way we stopped at an animal sanctuary. There were a bunch of monkeys, a boa constrictor, a toucan, parrots, a bear, pumas, llamas, vicunas and condors. It was cool to see the condors fly (they have huge wing span) and the pumas jump. For the rest of the drive we explored saline pools in Maras which were really awesome. They looked exactly like Pamukale (remember the trip in Turkey?) except that the water wasn’t as blue. There were salt crystals on the sides of the pools. We also saw the round planting terraces of Maray made by the Inca. The landscape was beautiful, the golden barley fields, snowy mountains in the distance, cows and donkeys passing by.

The village of Ollaytaytambo was very small but it had beautiful Inca ruins. The stones were so finely cut that you couldn’t fit a pin in between them, and all they had to carve them with were river stones. They used river stones because they were stronger than the white granite they used to make their buildings. Modern human today couldn’t do such construction as the Inca. Another mystery the Inca had was how they transported the stones, they weighed tons. Some stones were 14 feet tall, and 1 and a half meters think. They were incredible.

Finally I was going to explore Machu Picchu, after reading so much about it. We woke up at 5:40 A.M got on the train and waited for it to stop at Aguas Caliente. Got on a bus that led to Machu Picchu. After 20 minutes we finally reached it. It sits high in the Andes about 7000feet, it was built around 1450. I imagined it very crowded and huge. It was not bad at all, and it is build on top of a mountain so space is limited.

One of the first temples we saw was the temple of the Condor. The Inca used a natural formation of rocks looking like an outspread wings of a condor, in the middle there was a condors head and neck feathers carved in a rock. Behind the temple was an underground dungeon.

Then we went to Intiwatana. It is a column with four corners point to the 4 cardinal points, very important for the Inca used to predict the solstices. Every year on June, 21 on the solstice the high priest would tie a golden disk to the Intiwatana which would direct the sun to the ground to let the sun god know they were ready for another year’s cycle.

The terrace were amazing. The Inca didn’t just use the terraces for planting te crops, they also held up Machu Picchu, without the terraces it would have crumbled long ago. We also saw funerary rock, believed to be the place where Inca nobility were buried. The sacred rock was gigantic 3m high. The view was very nice and the walls around it were stunning, the stones were so finely cut that a pin couldn’t fit inside.

The central plaza was a nice place a green expanse with roofless buildings next to it. In the morning there was a lot of fog but in the afternoon all of it went away. In the middle of the day we hiked the Huayna Picchu Mountain. The hike up was bitter and tiring but the views were all worth the pain. The hike back down was just as tiring. There a few other places we visited after hiking the mountain, such as the funerary rock which was thought to be the place were Inca nobility were mummified. It was also the greatest place to take a picture of the ruins.

As I took my last glances at Machu Picchu I was thinking as we first came in to Peru I wanted it to go by really fast but now it is actually going to end in 2 days I am almost frightened about it. When we drove to Cusco and got on our plane I felt better.
Then we landed in Los Angeles. Our voyage was done yet another adventure was only beginning.

Lima, the capital city of Peru has a population of about 10 million residents. The slums alongside the brown mountains that look over the city make up about 1/3 of all that. Miraflores, the upscale district where we stayed in had many nice restaurants and shopping malls. Aside from the historical center, the rest of Lima was dingy, with half-finished cheap cement buildings and trash piling up alongside sidewalks and blowing into the sewers that smell like any large city sewer. No, I did not care much for Lima, or for the dusty, barren mountains with the big Jesus looking over them. We took this bus company called Peru Hop all the way from Lima to Cuzco. These weren’t like the bus we took from the Amazon to Quito, no, these were big buses with comfortable reclining seats and lots of leg room. The fun thing was, we never spent that much time in the bus anyway, we took tours most of the time.

Like on the first day, we visited a beautiful Spanish Mansion with slave tunnels. It was horrible down there. I inhaled dust with every breath and at times the walls and ceiling were so tight, that I was almost walking on all four on the dirt floor. Then we stayed the night in Paracas, a small sea side town with an island just off the coast which is nicknamed the poor man’s Galapagos. There I saw numerous sea faring birds like sea gulls, red-footed Nazca boobies, and my favorite, penguins! They ae the cutes birds I have ever seen! These particular ones were only about a foot high, and they waddled and hopped from rock to rock in the most adorable way. The lack of sea lions was made up with the abundance of birds. They covered the cliffs and flew all around our speed boat (I got lucky that they didn’t poop on me, the people behind weren’t so lucky)! On our way back in, We saw a pod of 20 or so bottle-nosed dolphins! They were much larger than the ones we saw in Australia, though they also didn’t come within 4 meters of the boat.

That afternoon we arrived in another town called Huacachina, I just called it cappuccino, because that’s what it sounded like to me when I first heard that name. It was an oasis in the middle of 300 foot sand dunes. With my dad, brother, and other people from our bus, we took a buggy ride through the dunes. We got off to a bad start because we got the worst, most rotten buggy in the bunch, and our driver was 15 minutes late because he decided to get a last minute ice cream and bathroom break. But then it was all fine when we started driving over the dunes. It was a very bumpy ride, the people in the back were jostled and shaken from side to side. Then the time came for sand boarding. I was cautious and decided not to injure myself on the first ride, so I went on my stomach. And then I sat down, but forgot to strap myself in, so I flew off about midway down the dune. And then I got brave enough to stand up like a real snowboarder. I zoomed down the hill as if I had rockets attached to the back of the board. I don’t know how I managed to stay standing up the whole time, but I lasted 2 more successful rides before smashing face-first into the sand. After that I was pretty inconsistent with my rides, sometimes I would stick a perfect landing, and other times I would be biting the dust. The sunset over the colossal sand dunes was beautiful, I felt like I was on an African safari. I didn’t want it to end, but time flies when you’re having fun, and all good things must come to an end someday. Afterwards, I had sand EVERYWHERE. I think I dumped at least a pound of it from my sneakers alone. The next morning I decided to climb the biggest dune of all which bordered the hotel. It’s a lot harder than you might imagine. For every two steps that I took, I slid down one. My progress was slow and in every way inconsistent. So an hour had gone by, by the time I reached the crest. And then I did the stupidest thing possible, I sprinted immediately down its face. Oh, but what a feeling. I felt like I was flying! I took big leaps while trying to avoid the miscellaneous trash heaps on the sand. It took less and a minute for me to reach the bottom and jump into the frigid water of the swimming pool.

And then, guess what we did next? We hopped onto the bus again! Yay! I absolutely LOVE staying on big, cold buses all night long! No, we stopped twice, once for dinner and then to go see the Nazca Lines. There are many theories about these ancient figures; some people say that they were created by aliens, others think that it was a very ancient civilization. Nobody knows for sure who made them, or when, and I don’t think we ever will any time soon, but one thing is certain, they were made by someone. And they are big and can only be seen from above, so whoever made them must have known what they were doing. They’re mostly primitive figures of animals drawn about 8 inches deep into the gravely sand. There is nothing out there (except the Nazca Lines of course), and a flat expanse of desert with mountains in the distance. I probably spent more time writing this passage than I actually spent there. We watched a few movies in the bus, but I couldn’t sleep, not even when we arrived at our hotel in Arequipa.

You could really see the Spanish influence in that town. The architecture was beautiful; inner courtyards, bright red, yellow, and blue colored paints everywhere, ornately carve wooden balconies, big stone carvings, and big churches. I thought that the style of architecture in Arequipa was nicer than in Cuenca, only because the whole city was the same Spanish style, not just three or four buildings. The markets there were really colorful, and the food was so tasty. We went to visit the old St. Catalina monastery for nuns. It was built in 1600 and is still in use today. The nun’s parents sent their daughters there around the age of 11 to get an education. Not all of them would become a nun, and they could leave the monastery if they didn’t like it as well. The grounds were so vast, it almost felt like an entirely new village! After passing three big courtyards, we came upon the place where the nuns used to reside. Where as in Europe, where the nuns all sleep in the same dorm and eat together, there, they all had their own private apartments with small gardens and kitchens with big stone fireplaces. In addition, there were small chapels more or less around each corner. I tried one of Peru’s specialties in Arequipa; Chica de Morada. It’s a drink made from blue corn. I know what you’re thinking, that a corn drink is weird, but surprisingly, it was really delicious and sweet. We could only spent a couple of days in Arequipa, because Cusco was the next stop.

I spent 12 straight hours in a bus (without any bathroom breaks, can you imagine)? I felt so sick, both with the constantly rising elevation, and the serpentine roadways. With every bend in the road, my stomach churned, my kidneys rebelled, and my head throbbed. When we finally arrived in Cusco, I felt like I was dying. I was too nauseous to notice the parade of people dancing in traditional costumes going on in the main square, or the wooden saints being carried by men into the cathedral. In fact, I stayed in the hotel room until dinner time. Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital is 2,800 feet higher than Arequipa, that’s almost 10 Eiffel Towers stacked up on top of each other. What did I do in Cusco? Well, I walked, a lot. I walked through narrow, paved streets with ancient Incan stones lining all the buildings. I walked through huge covered markets where the smell of dried lamb’s head and freshly fried pork’s feet hung in the air like an old blanket. I ate there too. But not the two repulsive (I find the repulsive) foods I just mentioned to you, I had stir fried lomo with papas fritas and arroz, and crunchy dulce de leche-stuffed churros for dessert. We were lucky to be in Cuzco during Corpris Christi, a big holiday for the Peruvians. It’s when they make big statues of the saints and they carry them around the town, bringing them into all the most important cathedrals and churches. The majority of people living in Cusco was mobbing the main square. There wasn’t any room to move, and it was just as difficult to see the parades. My favorite part was the music. A marching band in tuxedos was proceeding each saint, 100 decibels of the loud, festive music resonated in my heart, and also in my ears. I used to play in a band, that’s probably why I have sensitive ears now! Cusco, I noticed, like all South American cities, stretched out far and wide when I was overlooking it on top of a mountain. That would be the second to last time I would see it from up above, for the preceding day, we left on a day trip, and didn’t return for 4 days…

POP QUIZ: Why is the Amazon Called the Amazon? In ancient Greece, there was a legend about feared women warriors called the Amazons. They threw spears and looked rather large and fearsome, so when the first explorers came and saw the natives with spears and long hair, they thought they were the Amazons, thus giving the jungle its famous name.

It all started at 11:00pm on the 20th of May. The bus ride to the jungle was even worse than in Laos. There at least, we had had some sort of bed to sleep on, here though we only had narrow seats to try to make the 8 hours go by faster. We had a 3 hour wait in the capital of the region, Lago Agrio. On top of that, we had an additional 2 hours of bus ahead of us. At the entrance of the preserve, we were greeted by our guides who led our group to the pirogues, narrow canoes with motors. We were very unlucky, for fat drops of rain started to pour down on top of us.

Riding on the Amazon River reminded me a lot of Tortuguero in Costa Rica. The dense forest, the logs hidden just beneath the murky brown water, the vines hanging down from dead trees… As the first hour dragged along, and the forest got deeper darker and the river wider, so did my imagination. At every movement of a leaf I imagined there to be an angry jaguar ready to pounce, a silent boa eying me closely, or a hungry caiman eager to get its mid-day meal of a skinny 13 year-old girl. After 2 wet hours, our lodge came into view. Had we not stopped at the dock, I would have missed it.

For lunch we had chicken with mashed potatoes. Our room had a thatched roof with nothing closing it off so spiders and such had made their homes along the beams. That night we did a sunset cruise that led into a night walk. Only 4 out of the 12 of us there had flashlights, so I spent most of the time looking at the ground to try to avoid the roots and mud puddles. The sounds of the animals were deafening, aside from a couple tarantulas, scorpions, a night monkey and a lobster cricket. I was really expecting to see more wildlife because, well, this is, The Amazon. On our way out, a boat from our lodge picked us up. He maneuvered the long boat seamlessly through the mangrove patches in pitch black darkness.

We went on another tour during the day and it started to pour down so hard, my poncho was soaked on the inside! We saw a few monkeys playing in the trees and blue and red macaws flying overhead. Of course there were also many insects such as bees and termites and leaf cutter ants. The most interesting animal was spotted by our guide, as usual. It was a tiny poison dart frog with the colors of Ecuador; blue, red, and yellow. It was buried under a bush, so it took the rest of the group a minute to spot it. Our guides were incredible at finding animals, like a foot-long boa constrictor wrapped around a branch at night, or an immobile sloth sleeping high in the crook of a tree, or even small brown bird seamlessly camouflaged on top of a branch! Near the end of that excursion, we came upon a muddy swamp. We all had rain boots, but there was a gap in between the sizes 39-43, so most of us had big boots. Anyway, the mud was at least 1ft deep in most places, so our boots got stuck. Jayden actually fell into it, so from the knees down he was completely covered in mud. That evening we took another cruise down the river and I swam, so now I can say that I went swimming in the Amazon!

After the sun set over the jungle, we went looking for caimans. Their eyes reflect light when it hits them, so at night it’s easier to spot them with flashlights when it’s dark outside. After an hour, we saw all but two, and they were half hidden under the water, so we didn’t have much luck with that. For dinner (I don’t remember what I had for dinner, but I do remember what I did) I talked with the people from my end of the table; Britt, Daphne, Holly… They talked about their professions and asked me what I wanted to be, and I told them entrepreneur. We talked and played Jenga until the lights went out at around 10:00. I hated the smell of bat guano in our room from the small fisher bats flying up above in the ceiling, so I spent as little time in there as possible.

On our last full day in the jungle we visited one of the communities. There were 150 people living in that particular community, and it was almost modern. It had a stadium of sorts, a high school, and elementary school, and about half the houses were made with cinder block. Little boys were playing together in the river with canoes. Our guide took us all around the community to make us try the different fruits like cacao fruit, a weird marshmallow-looking gummy fruit whose name has escaped me just about like all the other bizarre foods I’ve eaten. Then we made bread with a lady called Maria. She was of native descent, her eyes were creased, and her skin was slightly darker than that if the Inca Indians. The bread had only one ingredient, and that was yucca, a long white root that has almost has a potato-like texture, and picking it from the forest was the first step in making the bread. After we pealed and washed the yucca, Maria put our group to work on grating it. Grated, they looked more like cottage cheese than potatoes. Yucca is made up of 85% water, which is highly toxic. In the olden days, people who were unwelcome to a village would be given a special drink of fruits with that water mixed into it. That would be both a welcome drink and a farewell drink! Maria wrung the mixture out in a small woven, palm hammock. She repeated that process for five minutes, and the water never stopped flowing out! The big bucket she had placed underneath was 1/3 full by the time she finished. With a coconut bowl, she then scooped up the dry yucca flour and spread it on a thin clay plate that had been heating over a fire. A few minutes later, the yucca crepe/bread was ready. The crunchy small granules left a dry feeling in my mouth, Nutella would have helped with that, but no supermarkets, not even Mega Maxi have it in stock.

After lunch we went to the shaman. Although he was only 55 years old, he was already a great-great grandfather. The people in this community get married very young, in fact, I would already be married by now, which is really scary. The shaman was dressed in traditional dress, with big seed necklaces, a long green tunic, and a beautiful headdress made with the feathers of tropical birds which he had make himself. He talked about ayahuasca, a special juice made with a special type of root and tulip. For graduation, the apprentice shamans must drink this juice. It works almost like a drug. You have hallucinations and bizarre dreams, and to become a real shaman, you have to be able to control those dreams and images.

It was a shame that we had to leave early that next morning at 9:30. The bus ride was as terrible as the first ride (which didn’t surprise me). All in all, the Amazon was a must-see place in Ecuador. Though I would have liked to see more animals in the jungle and less in our room (the bats and their horrible poop were the worst)! I’m going to miss all the people from my group. I liked socializing with other people again and being part of a group. I got to meet some really amazing people whom I considered like my siblings, even if it was just for 4 days. At first I thought I would be relieved to be back in Quito, with creature comforts like a modern apartment with electricity all day and hot water, but some part of me the was disappointed to leave Amazonia, that I had not seen what all there is to see, or experienced all that can be experienced, but I knew I had. I have seen more and felt more of the Amazon than all of my friends and classmates will probably ever experience in their entire lives, so I won’t complain about that.

The 7 hour bus ride came to a halt in a small town called Lago Agrio. We got onto a long narrow canoe called a Pirogue. I was starting to think that we were never going to make it to the lodge because we had a very long bus ride and then the canoe ride was never ending.

I was expecting to see a lot more animals but I guess we see what we can in the forest. The guides were incredible at spotting things. Ours spotted a small white Amazon tree boa, in the dark, and the boat was moving superfast. He saw a camouflaged poison dart frog and they are so tiny about 1inch big.

On one trek we went on, it was incredibly rainy . We walked in the rain for hours and it became super muddy. There was an area called palm swamps and the mud nearly overflowed in my boots. I took a serious mud bath first my boot came completely off and my foot got drenched in mud I would have had to walk without a boot if a really nice Swiss person hadn’t pulled my boot out. After that I completely fell hands first in the deep mud, I was truly covered. But in the end I took a really nice swim in the Amazon River. Another day we saw the pink erawati river dolphins. They were more grey than pink and you only saw their fins and a part of their head. I was hoping to see an anaconda but those are a lot more active in the dry season. A bird that we saw a lot was the stinky turkey, they looked like fat phoenixes. When we were on a tour we spotted a snake bird, it was like a heron. It was just posing in so many ways, it was like it meant to put on a show.

Surprisingly I slept really well every night considering that the beds were basic. One day my mom woke up at 6:00 A.M to go bird watching and she said that she saw a lot of yellow macaws and toucans. Our guide said that we were lucky in see the animals that we saw because a lot of times there aren’t that much. We saw 3 sloths and both of the kinds, the 2 toed sloth and the 3 toed sloth. We saw 6 of 7 species of monkeys. We saw the red howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, little night monkey in their house, monk sacky monkey, white capuchins, and the woolly monkey. One night we went on the jungle walk where we saw scorpions, 3 giant tarantulas, a lobster cricket that was as big as my hand, and a night monkey that was active. After we went looking for caimans, we saw 2. One was a spectacle caiman that disappeared before we could take a picture, but the other was a black caiman and we just go a picture of him.

We visited an Amazonian community. We learned how to make a kind of bread from manioc. It was like pita bread but the texture was like a bunch of bread crumbs made into a bread. After lunch we visited the Shaman. He was decorated with a headdress made from the feathers of exotic birds, necklaces made of animal teeth, nuts, and seeds. The law was that the shaman had to make everything himself. He said that to become a shaman you had to train for 15 years, those that trained for less were more like sorcerers than shamans. They were given a special drink called ayawasca. That put you in a kind of spiritual world. I learned how to fire a blow gun, and in 3 tries I hit the target. Melia’s dart landed 1 meter in front of it. Our guide showed us what a cocoa bean looks like before they get dried, they were encased in a white fruit that tasted exactly like mango. It was nice to meet a lot of interesting people and see everything that we saw. After getting back to Quito for one more day we left for Lima Peru.

We had good luck this time, our flight left on schedule and we had no problems landing at the Baltra Aeropuerto. I had no idea that landscape could change so much within such a short amount of time. It went from Arizona desert, to semi-tropical, to jungle, to semi-arid. We saw a few iguanas on the way to Porto Ayora. The sound of Urban music and the smell of fresh empanadas followed us all the way to our hotel. We stayed long enough to drop off our bags and then mom and dad made Jayden and I get up and walk to the port. But I’m so glad they did, because that might have been my favorite moment on this trip. Traveling around the world for a year can make a girl spoiled. Now there are only a handful of things and places that’ll really impress me, this was one of them. As I looked down from the boardwalk and into the emerald green water, I saw black-tipped reef sharks, in the harbor! Incredible! And then to my left there were 3 sea lions, hanging out on the beach. There were pelicans flapping around the rocks trying to get the orange crabs and sea turtles gliding gracefully through the water. Remember, all this was still happening in the same harbor.

The Galapagos is renowned for its snorkeling. So on our first day there, that is what we did. A “water taxi” took us to an island whose dock was being guarded by a sea lion. As if this was the usual nuisance, our driver got off the boat and started chasing it around the dock until the sea lion flopped into the ocean. It was so hot out and the water looked so clear, all I wanted to do was swim with it, but of course, I could not do that, yet. Up the wooden stairs that lead over a small ravine and through the maze of paddle cacti and thorny paloverde, to the ocean. There wasn’t much of a beach, mostly lava rocks and…marine iguanas. A lot of them. Their black scales blended perfectly with the rocks. I accidently stepped on ones tail and surprised a few others.

Back across the island, the sea lion had once again managed to get to the dock, and again our driver had to get it out of the way of the boat to make room for the boat. Snorkel time! I was reluctant at first to get into the 68 degrees water, but the push of people trying to get out of the boat forced me to go in. The cold water pressed around me, filling my mask, pushing the air out of my lungs. No sooner had I reached the surface, I was breathless again; a sea turtle had just brushed against my foot! I followed it with the rest of my family. Though the murky turquoise water veiled it from our eyes, and from the Go Pro. Coincidently, there was another one right around the corner. Afterwards we saw little else, and the cold water seemed to get the best of me. Last stop was Las Grietas, a salt water gorge in the middle of the island. The water looked beautiful, but I didn’t swim. The following day we took a ferry to another island, San Cristobal.

I stayed in our hotel for a few hours, waiting for my queasiness to pass. For dinner we ate at a pizza place which was, in the end, mediocre at best. My favorite part was going to see the sea lion beach next door. Hundreds of them were sprawled out on the sand. Oh, but the smell! Sea lions may quite be the smelliest creatures I have ever encountered! Their scent is a mix of poop, pee, fish, and sea water, only multiplied by a thousand in this place. They were rude too. They were clambering all over each other, no wonder they sound so grumpy. What broke my heart was watching the pups crying out for their mothers, and being rejected by all the others.

For my dad’s birthday, we took a big snorkeling trip around the island. For the first hour, I felt sea sick so I fell asleep on the bench and unfortunately missed the big fish my brother caught while fishing. After the first stop, in turtle bay, I felt alleviated of my sea sickness. The beach there was almost a white as White Haven Beach in Australia! The water was also as clear and as blue as I remember it being in the Whit Sundays Islands. But here, a sea lion swam amongst us. At first it was mostly interested in the fish in the back of the boat, but then it became more playful and started to swim all around us. It came so close to me that I reached out and touched it! That was clearly a new sensation for that sea lion because it turned its face toward me and made to bite. But instead, he/she nuzzled my hand and swam away in between my legs! Sea lions are more like dogs than lions. They lay around on rocks or on the beach most of the day, and are very playful with each other or even people. Then we went to Kicker Rock. Although the day was a sweltering 90 degrees, the water there was 50 degrees F, and without a wet suit, it was like ice water. The moment I touched that water, my muscles started to contract and cramp, making an otherwise beautiful snorkel less enjoyable. The large crevice in between the two rocks was home to many aquatic animals such as sea turtles, parrot fish, puffer fish, sharks, and of course, sea lions. The water was so deep and blue, that I couldn’t see the bottom. Although the swim was beautiful, my mind was set on climbing back up into the boat and wrapping myself in a warm towel.

We landed on the island of Baltra, it reminded me so much of Arizona. A dry desert looking, with trees that could have been paloverdes. I immediately notice a large yellow land iguana blocking our path.

We arrived in town it was fairly late on the island of Santa Cruz. As we were walking around I noticed black tip reef sharks, I spotted at least 2 dozen of them right there in the harbour. I looked to the other side of the dock and there were some sea lions. I rushed to the platform and saw 3 sea lions just chilling. I must have gotten too close and they barked at me which really scared me. My dad had told me about the local fish market. I had pictured them to be filled with fish, pelicans and sea lions. There were some big fish, like tunas and medium sized sharks. Once a sea lion grabbed the head of one of the tuna and ran away but the guy chased him, he dropped the head and went into the water. It was really hysterical. It was amazing how the wild life wasn’t scared of people. The same day I saw a sea turtle in the harbor.

We had booked a tour for half the day and we were supposed to see blue footed boobies, sea turtles, marine iguanas, and sea lions. We saw all of them which was nice because we usually only see 75% of the stuff we’re supposed to see. We started with a cruise around the harbor where we saw the blue footed boobies. We then went on a hike to see the marine iguanas there were a lot of them. It was a little bit scary because they blended in with the black lava rocks and you didn’t see them very much. There was a rock with hundreds of red amazing looking crabs. My dad and I chased them and it was like the entire rock exploded with crabs. Then we went snorkeling, seconds after I got off the boat my mom spotted a sea turtle, for minutes I was swimming right next to it. So close that I touched its shell. I was swimming with it until I noticed another turtle, and with this one I actually rode it. I grabbed its shell and let it take me for a ride. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. On a part of the tour we went to this canyon that was filled with clear green water. It was called Las Grietas. They are trying to keep a max of 50 people in at one time to make sure it is not destroyed. Good idea.

When we arrived I noticed that it was a lot different than Santa Cruz. There was a beach full of sea lions, the hotels were nicer. But the town wasn’t as nice. We went on a lot of day trips, my favorite was the trip that we went to Kicker Rock. We started our trip with a small fishing trip I was super happy because I caught a huge 40 lbs. wahoo. But what I didn’t like is that they said we were going to eat it for lunch but they didn’t prepare it. So it was an act of selfishness that showed that they just wanted the fish for themselves. After fishing we went to a small part of the Island where we saw not just blue footed boobies but also red footed boobies. They were really cool to see that they had vivid red feet and blue beaks. There were a lot of sea lions also. When we arrived to kicker rock I saw just how big and impressive it was. We went snorkeling and the water was bone chilling. There were 2 sea turtles, a forest of puffer fish which was really awesome, a black tip reef shark, and some sea lions. I really think that the trip was worth the $640 we paid for it. A few more days of watching sea lions and birds we left for the Amazon.

The Day was going perfectly we got to the Airport on time, checked off our bags, and got on the plane. When suddenly the announcement came we are not going to be able to go to Cuenca due to weather conditions. I knew that was a lie because every one that was on the plane with us was saying that the weather in Cuenca was fine. So our plane was canceled for a reason nobody knew. Instead we had to take a plane to Guayaquil and take an exasperating 3:00 hour taxi drive to Cuenca. The drive over there was supposed to be really nice but we couldn’t see anything because it was night time. When the car finally arrived it felt like my stomach was doing backflips. We had to climb over the Cajas which is a beautiful national park.

The next day we met up with some friends that my dad met in Massachusetts Tim and Suzette. They brought some of their friends John, Debbie, and Jolene. For the rest of the day we were getting a tour of the town by Tim and Suzette.We visited churches and museum, I loved the exhibit about Amazon, they had shrunken heads very creepy. When we all met back at this amazing restaurant called Anima. The presentations were spectacular sauces were arranged in drawings like, a fish skeleton or hunters and animals. One of the appetizers was in a bird’s eye chili plant. They stuffed Albano peppers and you just took the peppers of the plant. There was focaccia with humus. They had juices in small test tubes which was really cool. One dish had whole prawns (shrimp) on fish hooks suspended on a stick structure, which I though was the coolest presentation I had ever seen on any dish. It was incredibly cheap, for american standards, we were 9 people we had 2 bottles of wine, juices for Melia and I.

The following day we visited villages that worked at a special handy craft. My favorite was the panama hats. When we first arrived they weren’t open. So for 30 minutes my sister and I were zipping on a tiny zip line. It was actually really fun because you went superfast and at the end it made swing upwards. My sister and I were always fighting for who would have it. I tried going on my stomach but it made me drag my legs and almost die. When the shop opened my mom bought one. They put it in this huge press, which was what gave it its form. Then they used antique sewing machines to make a ribbon that could slightly improve the size.

There was also the jewelry village which wasn’t my kind of place. It seemed like everyone was selling the same kind of jewelry. My mom liked and bought something, but since I’m not a big jewelry fan I didn’t like that place.

We went to a nice sushi restaurant with Tim and Suzette. There was a big plater for 4 that had a bunch of different kinds of sushi and sashimi. I got a separate kind of sushi and it was my favorite out of all them.

The passing day we went to this really nice spa. We first went to a mud treatment which I thought that it was going to be this pool of mud but it was a hot pool that you put mud on yourself. It looked like we had a different skin color when we were completely covered in the mud. The mud was to exfoliate the skin. Then there were these amazing subterranean hot tubs. There was a hot one and a cold one. The point was that when you transferred to the cold tub your blood wen to your core and when you went back into the hot one your blood went to your limbs. So the point was to circulate your blood. When I went into the cold one it felt like my body was tightening, and when I went back into the hot tub it felt like my hands and feet were on fire. Probably one of the weirdest things ever were the box steam baths. It looked like a torture machine. You sat on a chair and adjust the dial to the way you wanted it. I put a lot of steam in and I was dripping like crazy. It was truly a really weird treatment. The bad thing was that the steam made me lose all my tan that I had to suffer with sunburns to get. When we left I felt incredibly clean, and really tired.

When it was around 8:00 at night there was a symphony that you could see for free. I had heard the song that they were playing but didn’t know what it was. I knew that it was Mozart, and my mom told me that the song was the marriage of Figaro. The second piece I had no idea what it was. It turned out being Mendelssohn, Violin Concert. There was a famous French violinist, Gille Lefevre. How he played was astonishing the speed of which he played and without music was incredible. It was really cool but at the end I was a bit bored because it was a bit long for me.

Murphy’s Law; everything that can go wrong will go wrong. It would seem that it has been proven once again! Not only was our direct flight to Cuenca delayed and then 3 hours later canceled for who knows what, but we also had to take the night time flight and drive for 3 more hours to arrive at our apartment at 11:32 pm. The only fortunate thing that happened out of that ordeal was that I slept like a lump in my king bed.

We had brunch the next morning with Tim and Suzette, some of my dad’s friends from his restaurant. Both they and their friends were really kind. We went all around the historic city center, visiting markets, churches, museums (where we saw shrunken heads), and boutique food shops and restaurants. One of them, El Mercado (the market) was particularly beautiful; it had hanging plants on the railings and a really good vegetarian sandwich. (If the question if I’m a vegetarian is running through your mind right now, forget about it! I love meat too much to part with it <3). We also went sifting for gold in the river that day as well. I spent an hour sifting in vain!

For dinner we ate at this really interesting restaurant with the whole group from brunch: Suzette, Tim, Jolene, John, and Debby. For appetizers we had stuffed chili peppers hanging on a wire tree and tropical fruit juices in flasks. My dad got some shrimp hanging on fish hooks for his main course, and we all shared the brownie, cotton candy tree, and bubble mozzarella cheese for dessert.

The following day my dad made dinner at Debby’s and John’s house. The dinner was pretty amazing, I helped make it, so how could it not be ;). My dad made his famous champagne risotto with the carbonated champagne fountain. Delicioso!

Cuenca is surrounded by many small artisanal villages specialized in arts like weaving, silver, guitars, shoes, and Panama Hats. Their weaving style was similar to the ikats the people wove in Bali. The similarity between them was uncanny, even the big wooden looms that they used were almost identical. The weave has the same cotton base, the tribal design, the vivid (but natural colors made from ingredients found in nature), and the old thatched roof houses that smell like must. Nearby the weaver’s village, there was an orchid nursery. They had over 2,400 different species native to Ecuador alone. I learned that orchids grow very, very slowly, it could be up to 8 years until they bloom for the first time. I didn’t know that orchids could be so diverse until I went there, but I won’t bore you with such inconsequential things, because then you’d stop reading my blog, and since I spent a few hours writing it, it would be a waste of time on my part. Ironically, Panama hats are not from Panama, they’re actually from here, Cuenca. I saw women weaving them on benches beside the street. A mediocre hat takes about 2 days to weave, and the best quality takes around 8 days. My mom got one custom made at a factory. They let her choose the shape and size from the pre-made ones, and then they put it in some sort of press which hardened the straw and gave it its shape. Next they sewed the ribbon on the external rim with black antique sewing machines.

I’ve been to 4 thermal baths around the world now. The Blue Lagoon in Iceland rivals no other hot spring in the world (those are just my thoughts). These in Cuenca are very nice as well. First I was taken into a sauna for 15 minutes, afterwards I took an exfoliating red and blue mud bath. My skin didn’t feel smooth until I got into the subterranean cave with more hot pools. To get my blood circulating, I had to spend 5 minutes in the hot pool, and 1 minute in the ice water pool. I could only manage 5 second in the cold pool before pins and needles started attacking my feet and hands. Luckily cappuccino and cheesecake were complimentary with our package, so I didn’t go hungry. My final treatment was a box steam bath, where I would sit inside and the lid would close on top, leaving only my head protruding. It resembled a guillotine, except that you were upright. By the end of the treatment, I felt very clean and refreshed.

Cuenca didn’t have the best weather, it rained at least 2 hours every day, and gray clouds impend over the city for the rest of the day. Cuenca’s city center isn’t as nice as El Centro Historico in Quito either. But it did have some really nice markets and restaurants and the best traffic was ok.

We were extremely jet lags and the first few days we needed to cope with it. We went to the Ottovalo market, it was one of the biggest markets in South America. Most people were selling artisanal goods like blankets, trinkets, jewelry, and shoes. We bought a lot of the blankets made from baby alpaca, they are really soft. We ate at this tiny stand in the middle of the market. They were selling tornados, it is a whole roasted hog. They pulled the meat out and serve it with beans and corn. I myself preferred the porchetta from Italy than the hornados but my mom, sister and dad preferred the hornados. We explored some more of the market buying more blankets, and a stress ball. My dad bought a panama hat for the deal of a lifetime it was $15, others ranged from 25 to $30. Panama hats are from Ecuador and not Panama, Ecuadorian helping build the Panama Canal were wearing these to protect them from the sun, the foreigner liked them and thought they were from Panama. It was a long day, we stop also at a waterfall, I was happy to return to the apartment.

On a Monday we went to the Centro historico. There were tons of old houses, churches they all have Spanish name like San Fransisco, San Catalina, San Augustin and town museums. We very unexpectedly came across the President of Ecuador. Every Monday He comes out and waves to everybody from his balcony. There was this huge ceremony with a marching band and guards in costumes. So it was pretty cool being able to say that I saw the President of Ecuador Mr Rafael Correa. I am not a huge fan of churches, and we did visit a lot. The Spanish did destroy a lot of Inca buildings to use the stone to build them. Some date from the 1590 and they are still there.

We also went to Mito del Mundo (middle of the world). I walked over to the line indicating the Equator, it was really strange knowing that I was walking on the middle of the world. There was several experience to show the magnetism of this place, you had to balance an egg on a nail, it seems easy and it was, but the scientific part of it was that you could only do it on the Equator. I encourage to try. The way water flow in a sink, they had 2 sinks on each side and you could fill them up and watch the movement of the water when it drain, opposite direction.

My favorite stop in Quito was the Guayasamin art gallery. He is considered the Picasso of Ecuador. His paintings reflects people that had suffered deeply. He painted the Incas being attacked by the Spanish. The Africans being torn from Africa. I saw a lot sadness and fright in his paintings. I thought his art was really abstract and incredible. There was a video showing him painting a portrait of someone and it was really interest how he described his paintings and how he painted this portrait. I know that I would never be able to make painting like his.

We had dinner at a really nice restaurant called El Ventanal with the grandparents of one of my best friend when I was living in Massachusetts Mateo. They are really nice people, they came and took us to this amazing restaurant above the old town, it was all illuminated at night and the restaurant had huge windows so you could enjoy the view and great food too. It was a very nice evening.